In
Samuel Adams: Son of Liberty, Clifford Alderman depicts the life of Massachusetts Bay’s most exalted advocate of
colonists’ rights. In fourteen chapters, only the last of which briefly mentions Adams’ activities after American
independence, Alderman details Adams’ contributions to this cause. Yet this book is not a model of clarity; lacking both a table of contents and chapter titles, its chronological organization of material is somewhat confusing. There is a bibliography of limited usefulness and an index.
According to Alderman, Adams’
raison d’être from young adulthood was the engendering of American independence. Adams dedicated remarkable energies to his cause, and every event in his life is portrayed within this context.
Adams’ values and life-style were shaped by the religious enthusiasms of his Puritan family. His Calvinism thus made him the chief advocate of moral restraint and
public virtue in a republican world. Living frugally, he never evinced interest in earthly rewards and his unpretentiousness earned for him popularity with lower-class Bostonians. Humbly dressed, he freely moved among them while courting their support for his cause. According to Alderman, however, Adams’ appeal was not limited to the lower classes, for his sincerity also attracted Boston’s richest man, John Hancock. Uninterested in financial remuneration, Adams’ devotion to politics strained his precarious finances. During an era that condoned plural office holding and encouraged other leaders to seek lucrative positions, Adams was remarkably disinterested in payment, believing that the public was not obligated to him for acting on their behalf.
After receiving a master’s degree from Harvard College in 1734 and working at a succession of unpleasant jobs, Adams, upon election, served as Boston’s tax collector for nearly a decade, thus beginning his career in public service. His leniency in collecting taxes endeared him to Bostonians, who subsequently elected him to the House of Representatives, where he sat until 1780. His literary talents were fully utilized there in penning several official documents protesting infringements of Colonial liberties. Although Alderman portrays him as an awkward public speaker, Adams was nevertheless an eloquent writer and his official works for the assembly, as well as his abundant private publications, earned for him a reputation as a key propagandist for American independence. Consequently, the British ministry feared him as one of the most dangerous American revolutionaries.
Within Massachusetts Bay, Adams used his enormous popularity garnering public support for resistance. Alderman claims that Adams’ devotion to the cause was manifested in several ways: through his participation in the Sons of Liberty—the organization of Boston tradespeople who vociferously, and occasionally violently, fought British usurpations of American liberties; by pleading, with James Otis, against the use of writs of assistance; through his leadership for the removal of British troops from Boston after the Boston Massacre; through his formation of the first Committee of Correspondence; and by his publication of the Bernard-Hutchinson letters.